Participants
Community
Peter Metcalfe (National Parks Assoc),
Jack Hilder (NSW Farmers Fed; NPA), Ruth Tremont (Consultant-
Landcare, WWF), Kath Wray (Citizens Wildlife Corridors)
David Curtis (Greening Aust)
Dept./Agency/Local Government
Paul McFarland (Dumaresq Shire), Bill
Webster (Uralla Shire), Bob Furze (Guyra Shire), Julian
(DLAW), Simon Smith (EPA), Greg Unwin (Dept of Minerals
& Energy), Bob Pressey (NSW NPWS)
UNE
Wendy Beck (Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology),
Ian Reeve (Rural Development Centre), Michelle Casanova
(Botany), Margaret Brock (Botany), Nick Reid (Ecosystem
Management), Carl Grant (Ecosystem Management), Peter
Jarman (Ecosystem Management), Keith Entwistle (Dean,
The Sciences), Sandra Grinter (PG), Sue Botting (PG),
Kate McGregor (Ecosystem Management), Jim Scott (Agronomy),
Hugh Ford (Zoology), David Brunckhorst (Director IBRM,
Ecosystem Management), Nick Rollings (Dep. Director, IBRM,
Spatial Information, Ecosystem Management).
Speakers introducing topics of discussion
| David Brunckhorst, Director IBRM |
Welcome and introduction to the IBRM and ‘bioregional
concepts’ for resource management. |
| Nick Rollings, Dep. Director, IBRM, Spatial Information |
Land uses and landscape functions across regions. |
| Paul McFarland, Env. Manager, Dumaresq Shire |
Regional cooperative approaches to local government
environmental management and reporting. |
| Ruth Tremont, Consultant, Landcare, WWF |
The community ICM and Landcare context |
| Margaret Brock, Botany |
Water & Wetlands - Potential for bioregional
approaches |
| Peter Jarman, Ecosystem Management |
Bookmark Biosphere (an experimental bioregional
model) and other recent experiences |
| Bob Pressey, NSW NPWS |
Perspectives on bioregional approaches to integrated
on-reserve and off-reserve conservation |
| Kath Wray, Citizens Wildlife Corridors |
Plotting native corridors and facilitating private
property owners interest across the region |
| Ian Reeve, Rural Development Centre |
Bioregions and Society - current perspectives on
citizen based resource governance |
| Wendy Beck, Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology |
Bioregional perspectives of Indigenous Culture and
Society |
Workshop Summary
The connectivity of nature (including
human activity) across adjacent and even more distant
ecological and agronomic systems is increasingly being
recognised. Concurrently, we need to break down the institutionalised
barriers and compartmentalisation that thwarts real moves
towards integrated broad scale resource management.
Many policy makers, land managers, private
property owners, local government groups and scientists
now consider that successful integration for however we
may define ecological and economic sustainability, will
be at the scale of across related ecosystems and landscapes
at a minimum.
There is therefore , a growing necessity
and interest in a much broader use of ecosystem for management
concepts, and a growing number of precedents for broader
view of landscape ecosystems that is useful for planning
and management at regional scales.
Human needs and activities must be reconciled
and integrated with broader scale ecosystem management
that maintains nature and ecological services - towns,
farms, forests, stock routes, pastoral land and fisheries
belong on the same planning grid as reserves, species
conservation, water management, waste management, and
land restoration. Ultimately a synthesis of desirable
and culturally meaningful characteristics are required
in a bioregional planning framework to integrate environmental
and sustainable development objectives.
Bioregional planning frameworks provide
a unifying instrument for:
• working together across jurisdictions
& fence lines by building an understanding dynamic
ecological processes in human dominated landscapes;
• protecting biodiversity and ecological function
at a regional scale (within and across bioregions);
• strategic large scale, ecological restoration;
• research & monitoring built into a strategic,
adaptive experimental and adaptive management framework;
• facilitating and capacity building of real community
ownership and responsibility for a sustainable future
- this can be coupled with community learning about sustainability,
and novel restorative industries;
• enhanced resources and capacity building through
public / private partnerships; and,
• strategically designed networks of core reserve
areas that are coupled with conservation mosaics across
other land uses and productive sustainable resource uses.
There are 3 basic and important elements
to implementation:
• To Identify information needs
to define flexible, hierarchical management units
• To Explore relationships between bioregions and
peoples perceptions of "their place" (i.e.,
the cultural identity of communities with the landscape
in which they live)
• To Examine the implications for assessment, planning
and management with communities and agencies as equal
partners - UNE can perhaps help play an integration/coordination
role.
The needs for coordinated collective
choice in planning and managing also suggests a novel
approach to resource governance is required (Reeve). If
ecosystems are ecological buffers - perhaps no governance
is required; but, if ecosystems are ecological transmitters
- governance will be needed across various scales, social
systems and ecological systems (in a landscape spatial
/ temporal context).
Summary of ‘brainstorming’
and comments
• rediscovering our own spatial
context; rediscover information - map to see its spatial
context with other aspects/information/issues
• indigenous peoples can provide an interesting
perspective from their traditional ‘bio’-
regional resource use and management
• spatial data standards to map research projects,
community projects etc -compatable with what agencies
use
• importance of making data freely available/accessible
so that it is used for best decision making - agencies
to attempt to free up some restrictions
• other ‘community workshops’ - thinking
in a regional social-environmental context and communicating
community access to info’ through WWW; internet
training; farm access/farm planning and monitoring feedback
(remote)
• importance and value for people to be able to
visualise their regional environment; see where they ‘fit’
and connections of land use / land management practices
across the regional landscape - so, use of ‘tools’
& ‘info’
networking and communication - register of interests?
• Develop more rural / agriculture links for cross
tenure / cross land use activities (talk to Jim Scott,
others?)
• identifying gaps (of many kinds!) is possible
when layered in spatial context
• regional cooperation for local government environmental
planning & Monitoring; also EPA, NPWS, Catchments
(recognising, they are not always the best context for
management)
• of interest to catchment management review and
3 tier planning process; info& coordination, vegetation
management, different social and land-use contexts (e.g.,
tablelands to coastal plains)
Action
Three primary needs were recognised
1. Need to develop a few particular objectives
/ goals (without becoming too narrow or exclusive with
regard to broader community objectives / expectations);
and, perhaps develop a few demonstrative projects which
show the value of integration of activities and different
types of information at a regional scale).
2. Rediscover existing information - what already exists
that can be spatially attributed (put into a regional
spatial context and made widely available), and network
a "Register of Interests"
3. Work towards funding for a spatial database coordinator
and community/agency liaison position
Suggestions on 1 above are welcome; a
small group will get together to develop a few of the
goals in the IBRM Constitution more fully.
Other action outcomes include:
• postgraduates are coordinating
spatial attributing of all their projects to map in the
local regional context
• Remote sensing project to look at linkages of
Citizens Wildlife Corridors
• Regional approach
• New funding for wetlands project will also look
at spatial context of project in the region
• small-scale bioregional, assessment of off-reserve
conservation -APAI application
• facilitate discussions with NSW FF on bioregional
planning / Biosphere Reserves
• start developing dictionary/list of info’
/ data layers for spatial data management
• Proposed projects on indigenous bioregions or
regional resource contexts
• progress towards development of a community consultative
committee
